The powerful ephemeral : everyday healing in an ambiguously Islamic place / Carla Bellamy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bellamy, Carla, 1971-

Series:

South Asia across the disciplines.

South Asia across the disciplines

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Healing--Religious aspects--Islam.

Healing.

Spiritual healing--India.

Spiritual healing.

Islamic shrines--India.

Islamic shrines.

Sufism--India.

Sufism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (308 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The violent partitioning of British India along religious lines and ongoing communalist aggression have compelled Indian citizens to contend with the notion that an exclusive, fixed religious identity is fundamental to selfhood. Even so, Muslim saint shrines known as dargahs attract a religiously diverse range of pilgrims. In this accessible and groundbreaking ethnography, Carla Bellamy traces the long-term healing processes of Muslim and Hindu devotees of a complex of dargahs in northwestern India. Drawing on pilgrims' narratives, ritual and everyday practices, archival documents, and popular publications in Hindi and Urdu, Bellamy considers questions about the nature of religion in general and Indian religion in particular. Grounded in stories from individual lives and experiences, The Powerful Ephemeral offers not only a humane, highly readable portrait of dargah culture, but also new insight into notions of selfhood and religious difference in contemporary India.

Contents:

Introduction. Ambiguity: Hụsain Tẹkrī and Indian dargāh ̣culture

Place: the making of a pilgrimage and a pilgrimage center

People: the tale of the four virtuous women

Absence: lobān, volunteerism, and abundance

Presence: the work and the workings of hạ̄zịrī

Personae: transgression, otherness, cosmopolitanism, and kinship

Conclusion: The powerful ephemeral: dargāh ̣culture in contemporary India.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613520623

9781280107627

1280107626

9780520950450

0520950453

OCLC:

774278957